A number of techniques exist for filtering communications in a telephone network. Caller ID features, for example, identify a caller and allows a called party to decide whether to answer a given incoming telephone call based on the identity of the caller. Some telephone service providers also offer services to screen incoming calls automatically based on “do not disturb lists” so a user is not disturbed by telephone calls from unwanted parties.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,253,075, issued to Beghtol et al., entitled, “Method and Apparatus for Incoming Call Rejection,” discloses a system that rejects incoming calls for a mobile communications device. A rejection memory within the mobile device is preprogrammed with identification information representative of transmitting stations to be rejected. When a call is received, identification information included with the incoming call is compared with identification information contained in the rejection memory. When a match is detected, a rejection message is automatically sent by the mobile communications device to the transmitting station. Additionally, upon display of the identification information of an incoming call, the user may manually trigger the transmission of the rejection message from the mobile communications device.
Techniques also exist for filtering transmissions sent over the Internet. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,631,405, issued to Kobata, entitled, “Smart Internet Information Delivery System Which Automatically Detects and Schedules Data Transmission Based on Status of Client's CPU,” relates to a smart delivery system for transmitting video, audio, hyper-text and web documents to end users via the Internet on a non-real-time discontinuous basis. The server providing the information periodically ascertains whether the end user terminal is busy. If so, the transmission to the end user is terminated and the information is stored until such time as the “busy” indication is terminated. The indication for the end user of incoming information is in the form of an icon generated on-screen that the user can click to obtain the sought-after information.
Thus, telephone and Internet transmissions can be filtered using automated agents, and it would be an advancement in the state of the art to be able to more efficiently monitor the filtering performed by automated agents and to provide feedback to a user of the status of incoming transmissions.